No substitute for player development

As a youth coach, the need to develop individuals means you cannot keep picking the same team every week, with the same players on the substitutes’ bench.

If you continually leave certain players out, they will fall behind and find it hard to be at their best when they are called upon, because they are not up to speed.

There will always be some players who are more advanced than others and at the start of the season this will be quite obvious. 

But, by the end of the season, it should have levelled out. This means match time is vital to all your players – so the same ones shouldn’t be sitting on the bench.

It must often seem that professional coaches have it easy – it doesn’t matter how many players they have on the bench, they are under no obligation to bring any of them on if they don’t want to.

The situation isn’t quite the same for a youth team at grassroots level. It can be difficult to appreciate the fact that all players must play - and sometimes awkward to facilitate.

If you have an away match and have to travel a long distance, you might want to consider only taking a couple of subs, so everyone knows they are going to get game time and will feel the trip is worth it.

But, even then, there are inherent issues to navigate. Say your team is leading 2-1 and playing as a coherent unit, but you know you have a final substitute to use. 

It is made all the more taxing given that their parents are standing there, waiting for you to make their son or daughter’s day by bringing them on.

"Ensuring everyone plays must be better than kids stood on the sidelines, isolated..."

But after they come on, you let in two late goals - and even though you know the collapse isn’t because of the substitution, some of the parents are not happy that you changed the balance and shape of the team by bringing the player on.

This isn’t a hypothetical. It is a real example that happened - and you will have no doubt have heard of similar scenarios.

Some parents won’t like to see their son or daughter being sacrificed, particularly when the team ends up being beaten. However, losing 3-2 but ensuring that everyone plays this great game of ours must be better than winning with kids stood on the sidelines feeling isolated.

These players need to be given the chance to get up to speed with the rest of the team and sometimes results may suffer because of it.

The players soon get over it, much quicker than you or I - or the parents. And let’s not forget that the same principle about blooding players - giving supposedly weaker talent a chance - is something that is done everywhere, even by your opponents.

Come the end of the season, you may not have won the league but you will have advanced every one of your players to a better standard than when they kicked off the campaign.

And if that’s not the sign of a good coach, I don’t know what is!